Who is the best person to treat BPDCN?

When seeking treatment for any cancer, it is important to find someone who is an expert in that cancer.

However, BPDCN is such a rare disease that there are only a few doctors and centers around the country that specialize in BPDCN. This video will provide the names of many of those specialists and centers, so you can connect with them and get the best care you need.

Who is the best person to treat my BPDCN?

Information is quite limited sometimes in these rare diseases, and BPDCN is no exception to that.

With it being so rare, there's a few academic centers in the US that have dedicated centers for this.

You know, I put myself forward, as you said, you know, so Naveen Pemmaraju, me and my team at MD Anderson, where in our group, Doctor Hagop Kantarajian, our overall chair of leukemia has established me as the inaugural director for the BPDCN program, showing the importance, really, quite frankly, of this rare disease in the greater milieu, but also has helped me to build a team, both a clinical team.

So when you see my team in the clinic, the PA, the nurse, the MA, they all know BPDCN and know what's going on, then we have a research team, just clinical trials dedicated, as I told you, some of the exciting triplets and so on and so forth. So I think a dedicated team, not only the physician but the team that's essential, as we've seen in other rare diseases.

I'd also like to give a shout out to my colleague, Doctor Andy Lane at the Dana-Farber, similar situation. You know, he is the director of their BPDCN program there, in Boston. Doctor Marina Konopleva, who's now at Albert Einstein in New York, doctor Kendra Sweet, David Sallman at Moffitt Cancer Center, Doctor Eunice Wang at Roswell Park, so on and so forth.

So you're right. So a lot some of these major academic centers that are known for blood cancers may not necessarily have a BPDCN site.

I would direct folks to our, well received paper and blood. It was called NABC North American BPDCN consortium led by myself, Doctor Kantarajian and published in blood 2022. And you'll see a list of some of those, authors and sites.

Also the Nccn guidelines led by Doctor Pollyea, Doctor Jessica Altman, are now including very nicely our BPDCN in the AML guidelines.

Yeah, I would say there's not a lot of doctors that treat it because it is it is rare and it's highly specialized. I think it's a team approach. So you really need to have, first and foremost, a hematopathologist that can recognize and know to stain for the markers CD 123, CD4, CD 56 and other markers and be able to make that diagnosis.

And then you need a hematologist typically, a malignant hematologists and often they are people who do leukemia or myeloproliferative neoplasms.

And there are certain centers that obviously have more experience in it. Like one of my closest friends in this field, Naveen Pemmaraju, who is one example of that at MD Anderson. He's really someone who is who has, been, you know, at the forefront and been interested in this disease.

So there are pockets, I would say, of excellence where there is, you know, highly specialized, you know, almost, you know, focused centers of excellence in it. But really, you want to go to a place where there's a high volume of leukemia and myeloid malignancies and people who are familiar with this. And again, team approach you, you know, you you do need that hematopathologists.

You need the hematologist. You need all the support staff involved. And it often involves a dermatologist. And it could involve a neuro oncologist. There's a lot of moving parts here.